How To Make Money With Amazon Returns, Overstock and Closeouts.


closeout brokers, closeouts, surplus inventory buyers

The more consumers shop, the more likely they are to make returns. Customer returns are an inevitable part of doing business, especially with the continued growth of eCommerce. In 2020, consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants, according to sources. The most pressing question looming on your mind: Can excess inventory buyers make money buying liquidation pallets and closeouts? Yes! Ever wonder what happens to the items you return to Amazon? Not all of them get re-listed, especially if that user sells only new items. Instead, the warehouses pack returned items into pallets and sells them to closeout brokers and liquidation buyers that buy overstock. They also sell these return pallets to liquidation distributors, like Merchandise USA and other closeout buyers and closeout distributors.

Brands themselves often don't take kindly to these independent liquidators. If a liquidator claims that a product is in new condition, but the end customer receives a clearly used product, that reflects poorly on the brand. Shoppers may leave negative product reviews. Amazon may even suspend that product if there are enough quality concerns. Brand name sellers often won’t sell to excess inventory buyers for this reason, and they prefer to find liquidation buyers overseas where the brand may not be as popular. It is important to get rid of closeouts and excess inventory to liquidation buyers, but sometimes the repercussions of the sale can be worse than not selling at all. In these cases it may be better ti dispose of any inventory that is no longer needed but taking up valuable warehouse space and preventing you from bringing in new containers of goods that your business needs.

Without liquidation businesses, though, pallets of unused items would stack up and take up warehouse space that you can use for other merchandise. If you think about it, eBay has been around for decades now. And their roots started as an "online garage sale" of sorts where people resold their own stuff. There is more than one way of making money with Amazon, one of which is its affiliate program that will see you earn a 10 percent commission for every sale you make. This means leading the buyer to a specific Amazon product by advertising links on your Facebook or Twitter account, for example. You can also sell closeout products from liquidation buyers on Amazon. You can also start producing something or create something and find a manufacturer to create it before selling it online. Or you can buy overstock and closeouts from surplus inventory buyers who have a complete inventory of deeply discounted products.

There are also other ways of making money on Amazon. If you are not into finding wholesale merchandise to resell on Amazon, and you are more of a poet or a novelist, you could sell your books via Amazon Kindle. If you had written a book you can upload it on Amazon and sell it there. Your goal is not only to upload the material but also to market it and try to get some good reviews on the book because otherwise, you’d get no sales at all. Selling books or poetry is different from working with excess inventory buyers because you would likely do it more for passion than profit. People who buy overstock inventory to resell on Amazon are most likely trying to make a profit and earn a living. People selling books and poetry are most likely doing it for the love of the work and passion for their work.

If you are looking to make some extra cash you could also turn to the increasingly popular method of how to buy overstock and wholesale merchandise and selling it on Amazon with a markup. As noted in the introduction, Amazon has become an online retailer as well as a marketplace for businesses to sell their closeout merchandise. And it is not only Amazon, the likes of Walmart and Target are interesting also. This is due to the huge amount of sales these companies have. In percentage, 30 percent of the merchandise sold online gets returned to the seller for one reason or another. This is all dead merchandise that they have to get rid of one way or another. The warehouse space alone is so expensive that they have to dispose of inventory from the 3PL warehouse immediately.

Now, you might ask why would I look into closeouts and the customer returned merchandise at all? Well, the thing is that the merchandise you are buying from wholesalers is the same customer returned merchandise that you are trying to get away from. The fact is that the merchandise that gets returned is picked up by the retailers dedicated departments, reviewed, sorted, repacked and then liquidated. This means that it gets sold in bulk at significantly reduced prices and the only reason is another liquidation buyer ordered it but didn’t want it.

Usually, closeout wholesalers were almost the sole customers for this merchandise. They’d turn up with their trucks and buy everything they could liquidate cheap and transport. Once the merchandise is delivered to their warehouses, closeout wholesalers and liquidation buyers go through everything, sort it and then sell it on to you, the next to last buyer, with a markup.

However, over recent years, retailers have found ways to skip the middlemen and sell their liquidated merchandise directly to smaller buyers, who could previously not keep up with the buying power of wholesalers. By setting up a storefront at an online liquidation platform Amazon, Walmart and Target are all able to sell closeouts and their liquidated merchandise to a world-wide audience at prices below normal wholesale. Closeouts and excess inventory are generally discounted at least 50% off regular price.

You will find that a number of liquidation companies are advertising Amazon liquidations, or Walmart or Target liquidations. The key is to find a reputable liquidation company to work with. Liquidated merchandise is still considered low quality, since the vast majority of merchandise is used, malfunctioning or even scrap. But the truth is liquidators and closeout wholesalers carry some very high end closeouts at cheap prices.

Making money selling online isn't as easy as some people would like to make it out to be, but for the e-commerce savvy entrepreneurs, it's always in the cards. It’s just a matter of sticking to sound basic closeout process and principles of marketing and sales, and taking advantage of what promotional features are available on the particular platform you're using. The key is to list closeouts and surplus inventory anywhere between 50% and 90% off regular prices. This is what savvy closeout buyers expect and if you are having a warehouse liquidation sale you will find if prices aren’t super cheap, nobody is buying.

Amazon is undoubtedly one of the best selling sites mostly because it has such a huge following. Exposure is assured as long as you have a salable product and you are willing to put in the effort to abide by the rules and regulations of the site. If you are a beginner, you will have to learn the ins and outs of selling closeouts online, and what it means to be an inventory liquidator for toys, housewares, home goods and all other consumer closeouts. You will have to learn the value of merchandise and how the closeout process works and how much inventory you will be able to liquidate.

One of the ways you can make more money in your drop shipping business is to be featured in Amazon Deals. Being front and center flashing “deal” or “discount” or “closeout”” attracts more impulse sales than any other marketing strategy in retail. Amazon Deals are usually time-constrained, so buyers are compelled to make a quick decision and buy that which they would otherwise think about under normal circumstances. Closeouts sell quickly and you have to be able to make buying decisions for excess inventory quickly.

Merchandise USA is an inventory liquidator specializing in closeouts of toys, sporting goods, camping products, home goods and housewares. We buy closeouts and distressed inventory from importers.